CORRECTION: This story was updated at 12:23 p.m. on Jan. 12 to correct the name of William Faulkner in the next to last paragraph.
___
Think of this as our Hamilton County Clown Show, saga 14: The Sequel and The Prequel.
It's not enough that our commissioners and mayor are still squabbling over real and imagined slights. Nor is it enough that all the grandstanding ego in the county courthouse already has cost us $72,000. Certainly it's not enough that the legal fees meter is still running after, on Jan. 5, the commission voted to authorize "appropriate" extra legal fees for itself and County Attorney Rheubin Taylor (but not for Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp) in the case of "the county suing itself."
Nope. None of that is enough. There's more.
The sequel: Tune in today as the commission discusses the resulting Jan. 6 letter from the Tennessee Comptroller's Office asking Hamilton County commissioners to revisit the matter. Specifically, the comptroller is concerned about the budget amendments resolutions passed with no dollar figures. The board approved future legal fees associated with the dispute between Mayor Weston Wamp and County Attorney Rheubin Taylor, but it did not define specific dollar amounts.
The comptroller's office acknowledged the "future" aspect of those fees, but noted that the budget amendments did not contain even estimated dollar amounts, which is required by law.
Would we reroof a house with no dollar-range figure in the contract? Of course not.
The prequel: Here's the thing. The commissioners were expressly warned about this during the meeting -- not once but at least twice -- as they debated these amendments and expenditures.
Hamilton County Finance Director Lee Brouner told them they would not be, in his understanding, in compliance based on concerns the Comptroller's Office already had raised from previous commission resolutions and situations.
Still -- despite Commission Chair Chip Baker in that same meeting coaxing a rough estimation of up to $200,000 more in future costs from the commission's outside attorney John Konvalinka -- no figures were added to the resolutions commissioners crafted from the bench and passed.
On Monday, Baker said he expects the commission will revisit the resolutions this week or next.
"It makes sense to me to ask for a specific amount," he told the TFP. "I'm good with that. We just need to talk about it and revisit it."
Pardon us for being editorial (no, don't), but if it makes sense now in hindsight to have included an estimated amount of these future legal costs, why didn't it make sense when everyone was rattling sabres and passing budget amendments?
And why didn't it make sense over the last few years to make county attorney Taylor seek commissioners' OK for estimates on open-ended outside counsel services he sought, billed and approved without commission input?
Please don't think we're picking just on Baker here. There have been several commission chairs over the past several years (not to mention this is a commission-as-a-whole endeavor). But consider: While Taylor's office, despite yearly budget increases from $889,500 in fiscal 2017 to more than $1.5 million in 2022, went hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget in the past three fiscal years. That over-budget amount was in part due to about $1.8 million in expenses for outside counsel costs to the county finance department. Those expenses were approved solely by Taylor with no signoff from commissioners or then-mayor Jim Coppinger.
Taylor's defense? Nobody's ever questioned it in 29 years.
We've posed this question before: Ask yourselves why the county attorney, whose job it is to instruct commissioners that they must approve procurement of items and professional services over $25,000, didn't do this for what he himself spent and oversaw.
And ask one more question: Why is the county commission mistakenly trying to save face for its nonattentiveness by defending the old guard county attorney and blaming the new mayor?
It this were really a TV series, today's clown show would begin with this Jan. 5 recap starring our apparently forgetful commissioners lecturing Mayor Wamp that he needed to get with his attorney and drop his lawsuit in the case of the "county suing itself."
The reality is that our commissioners are hoping we forget rather than notice their neglect of responsibility.
They glossed right over the fact that Taylor sued Wamp, and when Wamp responded -- as is legally required -- his counterclaim questioned the commission's authority to oppose the mayor's firing of Taylor and their own rehire of Taylor.
Commissioners ignored the fact that Chancellor Jeffrey Atherton ordered the commission be added as a defendant in Wamp's counterclaim, just as they ignored their finance director's warning last week that they could soon find themselves out of compliance with state law over the sloppiness of their resolutions.
Resolutions, we might add, that Taylor, the attorney, should have known to warn them about, as well. Not just last week, or this week, but for past years on end.
William Faulkner warned us: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Thus, the prequel, but, we hope, not the sequel. We're counting on progress and a happy ending for all. Or at least for us taxpayers.
Staff file photo by Robin Rudd / Commissioner Warren Mackey, back center, questions attorney Barret Albritton, an attorney representing Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp, about the mayor's compliance with resolutions concerning the status of County Attorney Rheubin Taylor.